In the award-winning memoir The Last Resort: Taking the Mississippi Cure, Watkins described growing up at the family hotel and realizing the dark half of the population was being kept in virtual servitude. By the mid ‘60s, married with four children, she feels trapped. A southern lady in a very conservative state was allowed little room for dreams and passion. The book ends with a desperate decision.

In That Woman From Mississippi, Watkins covers the decade that follows. Though she creates a new life in Florida—going to graduate school, becoming the college professor, living with a man she adores—there is a dark underside to paradise, along with an extra load of guilt for women who stray.